June 26, 2004: Wulffe was 30 years old when he came down with Potomac Fever. I slept at the barn for the past 2 weeks to make sure he stayed hydrated. Wulffe's starting to eat and drink water, so that's good, but, he can't put weight on his front feet. Hopefully it's just an abscess. Hopefully.

The air mattress is wonderful! a push of a button each evening and the bed fills up with extra air. What a delight, but, the horses still wake me @5:30am every morning for feeding. As u know, the head of my bed is at the barn door. One morning I begged Rita to give me another hour of sleep as I'd been up all night getting Wulffe to eat a bit at a time. Ritakins gently lowered her head; put her forehead to my forehead and pushed me up onto my knees & out of bed.. What a Hoot!

Even though I won the battle with Potomac Fever, Wulffe still foundered. The fever went to his feet causing swelling, allowing the bone to rotate and drop down.. this makes it painful to stand. if he had been much younger, we could do special shoes with thick pads to protect him from his bone feeling the ground.. but alas, he was a lot older then most horses .. and he had lost a lot of weight fighting Potomac Fever so he was weak. He had spent days standing leaning on the fence, wherever the fence met at a corner.

The horses woke each morning @ 5:30am, which is nice, if you're already outside and the sun is shining}. This one morning I didn't see Wulffe. so I put my boots on and took off searching... found him stuck down in a ravine surrounded by fallen branches. he couldn't turn around and get out. don't know how long he had been there. could have been a couple hours... but he was stuck!

Still in my PJs, I ran back up the hill to the barn, grabbed a rope and after an hour and a half of encouraging words & tugs from me, he managed to get himself out! {I needed him to do it on his own, cause if I pulled too hard I was afraid of his falling over on me and then we both would have been stuck down there!] when he finally got out, though, he was so happy that he marched up the hill. his face near my face {cheek to cheek}- taking big long strides, completely forgetting how painful each step was. that was an encouraging morning!

But the next day, he fell down to his knees twice while we were trying to dig out an abyss . Once with each foot. *sigh* the 2nd time he fell to his knees, he stayed there, stretched out his neck and started eating grass with almost a smile on his face. Probably felt a welcomed relieve when he took pressure off his feet. As sick as he is and in as much pain as he is in, he still hasn't lost his personality. He is so funny,

And the following day he went down every time the blacksmith tried to pick up a front foot. This morning the blacksmith was out to find & drain the abscess , but Wulffe fell again. He still can't put weight on either front foot. My blacksmith had never seen a horse do this before.
That didn't discourage me.

I came up with the idea of building a support system so we could hold Wulffe up to work on his feet. There's a 16year old boy big like "Baby Huey" > helping me at the barn. We put up cross ties on the posts holding up the run-in shed; tomorrow we'll use a western girth as a cradle under Wulffe's stomach and hook it to the cross ties. hopefully the poles holding up the barn will also hold up Wulffe and hopefully we don't pull the barn down, Fingers crossed and prayers said

We built a sling out of a girth and two cross-ties; hooked them to pillars. When my blacksmith returned the next morning we put the sling under Wulffe's stomach to give him support, while we picked up his foot. but he fell down so hard that the sling slipped back and I was afraid it was going to cause more damage so i grabbed the 'quick' release latch and let him go down. He couldn't get back up.

That's when I needed to call for backup. Friends and family came out but no matter what we did, we couldn't get him up. I knew he was weak from trying to get up and loosing so much weight from the Potomac Fever. I knew he needed to rest, but I started getting a lot of pressure and judging looks from those around me. Everybody becomes an expert.

One family member thought I wasn't going to call the vet. In front of everyone, told me that if I'd call the veterinarian, she'd pay for it! I felt so embarrassed, This wasn't a money issue. The reason I hesitated is I knew the vet was going to put him down and I wasn't ready to give up yet. It's been my experience when a horse is 30 years old they usually don't exhaust all their resources, However, in my spiritual walk, Often God sends us messages thru other people So I've also learned to obey & agreed to call the vet!

I've got to say the vet was terrific and went way beyond the call of duty. Before he made his final decision he left no stone unturned. They tried and they tried to help Wulffe get up, but Wulffe was too weak in the hind end. {what they didn't know was poor Wulffe got kicked in the hind end a couple days before by my mare, RockinRita! She's a terror when she's PMS! Poor guy didn't stand a chance. I heard the loud smack when she kicked him! I rushed into the paddock. Soon as Ritakins saw me, she spun around and took off running in the opposite direction. I know people say you shouldn't give horses human emotions, but I knew in my heart she felt guilty. From that moment on, I kept her separate from him, but the damage had been done. Nothing broken, but you could see he was having trouble walking. It broke my heart.

So that was part of the reason Wulffe was so weak in the hind end. but when the only way the vet could get him up was to give him steroids, he said to me that my" horse is 30yrs old... we got him up this time using steroids, but there's going to come a time when he'll be down again and I won't be able to get him up, he'll be in a lot of pain and the wisest thing to do was to put him down! "

I thought of him leaning on the fences for support. Even thou it seemed like he was getting better, or his spirits were getting better, he was actually in more pain then I realized. When I saw him fall down the first couple of times the vet tried to get him up, I knew this was the end. Knowing we'd tried everything, I agreed to putting him down!

I didn't see the actual act but the steroids gave him his appetite back, so I got to feed him before it happened. I guess this was meant to be this way! He died surrounded by a lot of love,

Another family member found a dime on the cement barn aisle floor. Strange, since I never bring my purse inside the barn because you never know what little critters you're taken home in your purse! I didn't give the dime another thought. That is until the next week.

While speaking to my Aunt in Florida, she told me after we left there last January, she kept finding dimes in the strangest places. I GOT CHILLS! I immediately wondered if Gary pulled the practical joke with the bird flying out from under Wulffe's tarp. You never know!! That's like his sense of humor.

My Aunt Irene thought maybe we left the dimes behind at her house, but after a couple of cleanings and with confidence she'd picked up all the dimes, she'd still come across one either sitting out in the open or on a table or in a tray. That's when she thought about my brother Gary and his thang about leaving me a Nickel and a Penny.